Adeline

by Norah Vincent

  Tom Eliot is the exemplar of their type. He embodies what he isn’t. Or—to put it more accurately, and for the sake of the enemy’s argument, more irrefutably—he emblazons what he isn’t all over his skin in every detail, like some savage’s tattoo, because he can’t, in fact, embody it. That is Tom. That is all of them. All over.

  Tom is coming to tea this afternoon, as it happens, and with his awful raving wife Vivien, too, of course. Virginia has made this mistake before—allowing that unruly woman through the door—and, after the last time, she’d sworn never to repeat it. Tom could come to tea alone, she’d said. He could come to breakfast, lunch and dinner, or to stay as long as he liked, so long as he left this creature at home. She is not housebroken. Sorry to all and sundry, but there it is. Vivien has become a nuisance beyond enduring, and she is ruining Tom to boot.

  Well, at least he is going to Harvard in a few weeks. That will be a year out of Vivien’s clutches, at least. She wonders if Vivien knows of this yet, or if Tom is planning to cable her from America with the fait accompli. Tom is hopeless at confrontations. It will not be a surprising move on his part if he keeps his nervy polecat in the dark until he’s put an ocean between them.

  Virginia only hopes, for the sake of their afternoon, that this has been his chosen tack. Otherwise, they are liable to end up fishing wifey out of the pond, or—and this is all too likely—having to wrestle the bowls from her as she heaves them one by one onto the dining table, gleefully shattering all the china and glass. That kind of outrage would be just up her street. Her type always seems to find catharsis in the sound of fragile objects breaking, the outward expression, no doubt, of her internal state.

  Ah, well, Virginia’s own state is fragile enough these days, having come through the tempest of The Waves, intellectually, artistically, bodily, emotionally spent. Now she is writing a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog, of all things, to cleanse her palate and rest in levity for a change.

  But she has come through, having fulfilled the promise of her vision, the bold creative mission that she had conceived in this very house seven years before and hammered out with Leonard in this garden on a summer’s day not unlike this one. She has done it. Leonard has called it her best, and though he often feels obliged to say this about new material, she cannot always agree or maintain her satisfaction with finished work. Often, after the thing is done, published and reviewed, and especially after it has been out in the world for a spell, suffering the slings, she finds it difficult to feel sure of it or to love it as she had when it was fresh. This time, however, she does. She knows The Waves for what it is and holds it to her as her own, beyond the reach of recklessness.

  She is having arguments over poetry with the disapproving young set out of Oxbridge, especially her nephew Julian, who, having followed in his father’s—and Leonard’s and Lytton’s—footsteps and gone to Cambridge, and joined the Apostles, is now fresh out of school and bearing down on the world like a Turk. With his first book of published poems under his arm, and his pen sharpened and unsheathed, he is spoiling for a fight.

  What is the art form of the decade?

  To him and his cabal it is poetry, of course, or so all the cockiest pansies are insisting. But what kind? That had been her main point of attack in “A Letter to a Young Poet,” an essay that Julian’s friend and fellow Cambridgeite John Lehmann had proposed she write for publication at the press. Lehmann, like Julian, has literary plans for himself, and so after having helped Leonard to run Hogarth for the past two years, he has given his notice. Still, he has put them in touch with Auden, Spender, Isherwood and other combatants of their generation. Whether it is for good or ill, she remains unsure.

  She enjoys a good scrap, and she had given it to them in the “Letter,” arguing that the topical preoccupations of the young—the plight of the working class; the Manichaean conflict they saw shaping up between communism and fascism in Europe, which they seemed convinced presaged nothing short of Armageddon; and their insistence that even the most grubby and abject details of real life, as they called it, must be made to sing—none of this had served their poetry well.

  Art that is made to serve politics—or worse, civics—is, she feels, bad art. A glorification of the gas works is not a poem. It is as simple as that. She had not written it quite this way, but it was what she had meant. They have great big brains, all of them, and, like Lehmann, great big plans to match, but they are simply too young, too arrogant and—she had not, of course, been able to say this in print either—too single-mindedly and shortsightedly entrenched in their buggery to know, to have lived widely enough or to have developed their craft enough to write what needed to be written.

  What did need to be written? Well, that is the bigger question, and not one to which she had provided specific answers in the essay, mostly because there are none. Abstraction and theory are all you have before the words have been written, before the work of art itself has arrived. Art, she thinks, is ontological in this sense. It must exist first, and by existing, both assert and demonstrate its necessity. Analysis can only follow. It cannot create, or envision the spirit of the age avant la lettre.

  Yet that is the game now, and in many ways it is good fun, even if it is just a bunch of overripe intellectuals pelting each other with wind. It is thrilling to be caught up in the blowdown, especially with Julian. Had it not been for him, she doubts she would have bothered with the other children, as she likes to think of them. But Julian has always been a special child, and these critical skirmishes with him have been, well, rather Greek, actually, like taking your student, or your brother, or indeed your son as your lover. Symbolically, Julian is all three, and though he is—obviously—not her lover, there has been something unmistakably flirtatious in their private exchanges, even, or perhaps especially, in her harsh criticism of his work, which he had shown her early on, asking for comment.

  Such passion is not really to be found in her generation anymore, and she misses it. She is, in fact, rather hoping to rouse crusty old Tom to a scrimmage this afternoon. But that will depend on Vivien.

  Tom and Vivien arrive promptly at four, when the garden is at its warmest and loveliest, heavy with scent and magicked by the first inklings of the long evening to come. Virginia and Leonard greet them there, sitting in the pair of four assembled cane chairs that face the back of the house. The other pair of chairs—strategically placed—face the two of them and give a view of the garden. They have been tactfully reserved for the guests. Virginia had urged, and Leonard had agreed, that this was the most prophylactic course to take for the containment of the lunatic—set the proper scene, bucolic, serene, hosts benignly in repose, and hope for the best.

  Tom has on his customary three-piece suit, funereal grey, with a sad white kerchief crumpled in the breast pocket like a failed flag of truce. Virginia can’t recall seeing Tom in anything else, always the most formal of suits, though this one is so uncharacteristically rumpled and careworn that she wonders if he has taken to sleeping in it. The stress of seventeen years chained to Vivien is showing more than ever, she thinks, as she looks at Tom’s shoes, which are so scuffed and in need of polish that they look as though he’s walked the length of the country in them pondering how to throw off his shackles.

  He is thin and very pale, his face preternaturally so. Vaguely slimed and sickly white, he seems to be sweating milk, though his nose, especially its trademark pointy tip, is quite red and faintly spider-veined. These are the effects of the drink, she presumes, which he has taken to like a Catholic in recent years. His hair is parted severely, as usual, just off center, which gives him the slightly clownish appearance of a man whose grooming habits were harshly imposed long ago—as his were—to create an impression, and have not been revised since. Naturally, to anyone with half an eye for these things, this style is painfully out of date and, aside perhaps from the ersatz Anglo-Brahmin accent he affects, is the strongest evidence of Tom’s overall constructedness.

  Vivien,
by contrast, is in white, head to toe—lacy summer frock, dainty low-heeled shoes and stockings. She is almost pulling off the picture of wounded innocence that she is trying to project, except for the narrow-brimmed bucket-style sun hat that she has pulled down so lank and low on her lolling head that it looks as if it was filled with water when she put it on.

  He looks like an undertaker. She looks like a misfit figurine torn from the top of a botched wedding cake. They both seem to be slightly drunk or—surely in her case—sedated, which makes their entrance that much more ominous. Clearly, Vivien knows about Harvard, and she and Tom are in the throes of detachment. This is not going to go well, and Virginia sinks deeper into her seat as she watches the toxic couple cross to the quartet of chairs.

  “So, Tom,” Leonard blurts, leaping from his chair and thrusting himself awkwardly forward to shake Tom’s hand, “how are things at Faber and the Criterion?”

  Obviously, she thinks, feeling vindicated, the mere sight of these two has worried him as much as it has her. Normally this would be a question for an hour hence, but panic has taken hold, and Leonard is running roughshod over the introductions, attempting to steer past catastrophe. There is a pall looming, one that even the newcomers have sensed.

  “Oh, very well, very well, thank you,” Tom replies, taking Leonard’s hand in a firm grip and sitting down gingerly on the edge of the chair opposite him. “Been enjoying bringing the young ones along,” he adds, unbuttoning his jacket and sitting back. “Auden, Spender, what have you. But then, you know. You have been doing the same. Really promising stuff—exciting.”

  He says this last word a touch nervously, perhaps concerned that his enthusiasm might sound proprietary and dismissive, but Virginia, at least, appears not to have heard, and Leonard doesn’t seem inclined to start anything.

  Still, Leonard has noticed, and can’t help thinking what he will not say. As Tom is aware, that spring, Hogarth had come out with a collection of new verse that included work by Auden and Spender, as well as a selection of pieces by other promising young poets out of Oxbridge, but Tom had already poached Auden’s and Spender’s first individual books of poems and, in essence, claimed them as his own. Poaching was a sore point between them, though somewhat less of one than it had been back in ’25, when Eliot had first defected to Faber.

  Leonard takes silent pride in knowing that this has been Hogarth’s best year yet, and their best overall financially as a working literary couple. Virginia’s books are selling well. He has just published the first volume of his own intensive historical study of warfare, After the Deluge, which he plans to extend to at least two more volumes. Life is good. Besides, seeing the condition that Tom and Vivien are in, sore points of publishing are the least of his concerns. It’s true; he isn’t going to start anything.

  “Yes, it is very exciting, isn’t it?” he agrees emptily, dropping the subject.

  Virginia, meanwhile, has not even risen from her chair. Instead, she has remained seated in the same posture that she has been in for the past half hour, with her legs twisted round each other. She looks as if she has been unwelcomely disturbed alone with a good book, and she has not bothered to remedy this impression. Vivien sits unbidden, pretending not to notice the slight, and sighs rhetorically at the beauty of the day. “Isn’t it lovely here.”

  Now that Vivien has taken her chair, Leonard sits as well and vigorously rubs the palms of his hands together, trying to summon an air of excitement that no one feels.

  “We think so,” Virginia says with a shade of condescension in her voice. But, sensing that she has perhaps been too cutting too quickly, she adds brightly, “The garden is Leonard’s baby. He’s worked quite hard on it. And I simply couldn’t live without it.”

  Despite the effort, this last part comes off sounding like a mockery of polite conversation, and Leonard is obliged to rescue at least the appearance of sincerity, if not the fact.

  “It’s true. Virginia wasn’t much for it at the start, but now she practically lives out here whenever the weather allows.”

  They all nod and smile appreciatively at this, relieved to be ignoring their discomfort, at least for the moment, but the smiles are visibly forced on all sides, as if the four of them have been surprised by a photographer and asked to pose for a snap.

  They had called it tea, but Tom and Vivien both hastily ask for drinks instead. Naturally, Virginia thinks—must keep up the derangement. When the servant, Nelly, comes for the order, Leonard asks her to bring Martinis for their guests, though by the way he asks, Virginia can tell that he is urging her to go light, light, light, please God, on the gin. To keep their composure, Leonard and Virginia opt for a lesser poison, sherry, and come off looking like a pair of vicars. Tom doesn’t fail to make this point, though it is a feeble one, for it is he who has become almost intolerably sanctimonious since he became an Anglo-Catholic five years ago.

  Virginia is tempted to chaff him over this, but decides that it is too complicated. Their balance is too weak. And anyway, now she thinks of it, he is really only sanctimonious these days in public, or for public consumption. In private, gossip has it that Tom and his coworkers at Faber spend a good portion of their weekly editorial meetings boozing, passing gas and telling off-color jokes.

  Part of her finds this impossible to believe, because she has always known Tom to be such a prude about bodily functions. Once, years back, when he had visited them alone at Rodmell, the three of them had been walking on the downs and Leonard had fallen behind to relieve himself. Tom had made a point of saying that he disapproved of such behavior, adding, in a shocked tone, that he could never bring himself to urinate in front of other people, much less outdoors. She and Leonard still laugh over this when it comes to mind.

  But Tom’s drinking and his years doing battle with Vivien have changed him, that’s clear. He still presents a pious face to the world, but behind closed doors, at parties mostly, she has seen him misbehave under the influence, and, seeing him like this today, soused in the middle of a Friday afternoon, she is coming to think it probable that his manicured front hides a truly twisted disposition. How could it not, really? He had always been a battened soul, latched watertight. Now, with the wear of time and conflict, the man is like a coiled spring, and alcohol, true to form, has proved a treacherous lubricant.

  When the drinks come, he and Vivien scramble for theirs as if they have been bitten by venomous snakes and these are the antidotes. Raising his glass immediately, Tom offers a cheerful toast: “It keeps you young. That’s what De Quincey says.”

  “Does he say that?” Virginia inquires skeptically, taking a very small sip of her sherry and thinking that the drink has certainly preserved Tom, but like a corpse. “I’ve just been reading De Quincey, as it happens,” she adds, “and I don’t recall.”

  “Really? Imagine De Quinceydence,” Vivien drawls, and pulls a face. She downs her drink in one and pours herself another from the shaker, which Nelly has been either heedless or mischievous enough to bring with the drinks.

  “Easy,” says Leonard, trying to tease, but his worry is all that comes out.

  “Yes. Never you fear,” mumbles Vivien over the rim of her glass, her eyes rolling. “It goes down so easy.”

  “He and Baudelaire,” continues Tom, ignoring this exchange. “They understood what the sages of the East have always taught, that paradise is a state of mind.”

  “Yes, but induced,” Virginia says, “which is not quite the same thing.”

  “On the contrary,” Tom asserts. “All higher states of consciousness are induced, and psychotropes, whether ingested or endogenously produced—by fasting, flagellation, what have you—have been a part of religious ritual since the advent of man. For Baudelaire and De Quincey, confined as they were by the strictures of their time and place, it was simply a question of expedience, the means that were to hand, and the fervent desire to explore. Opium, hashish, absinthe, wine. The trappings of the Western mind, you know, are deeply entrenched and harde
r to disengage.” He raises his glass again. “They require a stronger solvent.”

  Yes, Virginia thinks—glancing over at Vivien, who has wandered to the rhododendrons nearby and is staring at them as if they have faces—just look to your wife. She is a veritable pharmacopoeia on stilts, and the Dharma Body of the Buddha is apparently in the hedge at the bottom of the garden, after all.

  But despite her annoyance, Virginia identifies with what Tom is saying. It is, of course, her mindscape he is describing, and the essence of what she has been trying to convey in her work. The same is true of him, and this is what has always drawn her closest to him in spirit, his deep understanding and expression of this shared experience, the profound mysticism of everyday life. Thinking this, she feels snubbed by his pedantry, which seems artificial and intentionally insulting. He has never taken this tone with her. She dearly wishes that he had seen fit to say something about The Waves, or would now, but today he seems determined not to acknowledge her as a peer or as the confidante that she has often been to him.

  Well then, she resolves, taking an emboldening sip of her drink, I can give as good as I get. Raising her now half-empty glass, she says, “I should like to make a toast.” Over her shoulder, she calls in the direction of the rhododendrons, “Vivien?”

  “What?” gasps Vivien, startled from her reverie. Turning suddenly with a bracing hand over her heart, and surveying the group with huge, accusing eyes as if the three of them are fiends who have just materialized to torment her, she says angrily, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, dear,” Virginia says as if she is speaking to a cretin. “Only we’re having a toast. Come join us.”